Love and Mr. Lewisham

studies. It was ten years ago, and in those days he was assistant master in the Whortley Proprietary School, Whortley, Sussex, and his wages were forty

oys, whose duty it was to learn, and it was a matter of

ir-haired, indifferently barbered, and with a quite unnecessary pair of glasses on his fairly prominent nose--he wore these to make himself look older, that discipline might be maintained. At the particular moment when this

am could see them afresh every morning as his head came through his shirt. And over the yellow-painted box upon which--for lack of shelves--Mr. Lewisham's library was arranged, was a "_Schema_." (Why he should not have headed it "Scheme," the editor of the _Church Times_, who calls his miscellaneous notes "_Varia_," is better able to say than I.) In this scheme, 1892 was indicated as the year in which Mr. L

xcellent manuals of the Universal Correspondence Association, exercise books, ink (red and black) in penny bottles, and an india-rubber stamp with Mr. Lewisham's name. A trophy of bluish green South Kensingt

by the bed-head indorsed that evidence. "French until eight," said the time-table curtly. Breakfast was to be eaten in twenty minutes; then twenty-five minutes of "literature" to be precise, learning extracts (preferably pompous) from the plays of William Shakespeare--and then to school and duty. The time-table further prescrib

anguage completely--after three or four languages much less--which gives you, even at the outset, one each a year before breakfast. The gift of tongues--picked up like mushrooms! Then that "literature"--an astonishing conception! In the afternoon mathematics and the sciences. Could anything be simpler or more magnificent? In six years Mr. Lewisham will have his five or six languages, a sound, all-round education,

lid was open, and his knees were conveniently stuck into the cavity. The bed was strewn with books and copygraphed sheets of instructions

ured, and his eyes travelled from his book out of window to the vicar's roof opposite and its ivied chimneys. His brows were

tionary-ward ceased. He was listening to a li

ng acutely downward he could see a hat daintily trimmed with pinkish white blossom, the shoulder of a jacket, and just the tips of nose

ond the window frame. He strained t

thing! Where was I? Tcha!" He made a noise with his teeth to express his irritation, sat down, and replaced

icings, a rousing day, a clamatory insistent day, a veritable herald of summer. The stir of that anticipation was in the air, the warm earth was parting above the swelling seeds, and all the pine-woods were full of the minute crepitation of openi

p "Urit me," appreciated the shining "nitor" of Glycera's

f the needless glasses, wiped them, and blinked his eyes. T

rought his elbows down on either side of his box with resonant v

f watching the swallows curving throu

he asked vaguely but vehemently. "It's self-indulgen

gone round the corner by the post office, she will come in sight over the palings above th

e occasions?... Then abruptly a cloud drove across the sunlight, the glowing street went cold and Mr. Lewisham's imagination submitted to control. So "_Mater saeva cupidinum_," "The un

d the narrow, curved, uncarpeted staircase that led from his garret to the living room in which he had his tea with his landlady, Mrs. Munday. That good lady was alone, and after a few civiliti

shop-bell called her away to a customer. At twenty-five minutes to six he put the book back in the window-sill, dashed a few cru

e passage from Henry VIII. that should have occupied him down the street. Instead he was presently thinking of that

by an obsequious little boy

attered and scattered _Principia_, seemed dim and dull in contrast with the luminous stir of the early March evening outside. An unusual sense of the greyness of a teacher's life, of the greyness indeed of the life of all studious souls came, and went in his mind